Burlington High School students post, remove All Lives Matter posters

A Black Lives Matter flag was raised over Montpelier High School during a school-wide assembly on Thursday, February 1, 2018. More than 100 people attended the ceremony including students from other schools, law enforcement and elected officials.
GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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A Black Lives Matter flag was raised over Montpelier High School during a school-wide assembly on Thursday, February 1, 2018. More than 100 people attended the ceremony including students from other schools, law enforcement and elected officials.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

A Burlington High School student who attended Montpelier High School's flag-raising ceremony Thursday in honor of Black History Month hopes to get approval to raise a Black Lives Matter flag on his home turf.

"As we drove away from the school, the flag flew high and everyone I was with said that this will be BHS next week. We are hopeful," BHS senior Eli Pine, 17, wrote in a statement Thursday following the event in Vermont's capital city. "I thought that if this can be done in Montpelier, it can be done in Burlington."

Pine wrote he was proud and honored to attend the Montpelier event at the invitation of his BHS classmates Eliza Abedi, Balkisa Omar and Biniti Malawia, whom he described as three social justice leaders at the high school.

Pine wrote that he — along with Abedi, Omar and several other students — were to meet with high school Principal Tracy Racicot on Friday afternoon to discuss raising a BLM flag on the school's campus.

Two posters created by students at Burlington High School hung side by side on Feb. 1, 2018 at the high school.(Photo: Courtesy of Eli Pine)

Chairwoman of the Burlington School Board's Diversity and Equity Committee Susanmarie Harrington clarified on Friday that the committee had discussed and drafted a resolution in support of Montpelier's BLM flag decision.

Harrington wrote that Principal Racicot or Superintendent Yaw Obeng would know more about what was happening at the high school.

As for raising a flag, the school district said a discussion of all the implications and security issues involved with raising a flag would have to take place before any action could be taken.

Pine wrote that the meeting with Racicot also will address a poster he called racist that was placed around the school Thursday. The poster was created by the Junior Republican Committee of Burlington High School, according to the school district.

The poster's headline read: "Police are not Racist, All Lives Matter."

The poster stated: "According to The Washington Post Shooting Database and the Crime Prevention Research Center, and Bureau of Justice statistics: twice as many whites are killed by police than blacks."

Pine wrote that he and other students created a poster to counter the Junior Republican notice with information also said to be taken from The Washington Post's police data — but multiple copies of their signs almost immediately were torn down.

The Burlington School District said Friday there were no witnesses to the removal of the posters.

Pine's poster stated: "Police are not Racist, Black Lives Matter," and gave a breakdown of data to show that proportionally in the U.S., blacks are more likely than whites to be shot by police.

According to a 2016 Washington Post article, "White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population."

A crumpled poster made by Burlington High School students, which senior Eli Pine said was torn down on Feb. 1, 2018.(Photo: Courtesey of Eli Pine)

Both signs were approved by Principal Racicot. The Republican group took down its signs Thursday, while Pine's group put its signs back on the walls, despite some of them being ripped.

The district made the following statement Friday morning:

"Students at Burlington High School have expressed their ideas and thoughts around police brutality through posters hung at the school. The posters use data to support ideas. Schools are places of intellectual discourse. Schools always walk the fine line between censorship and aiding discourse. We will engage in this timely opportunity to work with students around this sensitive topic. To avoid conversation and sharing of information and ideas is contrary to the ideals of learning and teaching."

Principal Racicot on Friday wrote a memo to students about the need to for them to be critical consumers of data.

"Permission to hang posters is never an endorsement by the administration. The passionate outpouring of response has been awesome and has aided in this learning experience," Racicot stated.

The principal called for students to join her next Tuesday to discuss future criteria for posting flyers in the high school.

The district on Thursday announced a community-wide event at 6 p.m. March 9 "to expand dialogues, shift perspectives and address present-day injustices."